“we can't even write the reason why we can't write it down down,”
― There Is No Antimemetics Division
― There Is No Antimemetics Division
“Welcome to the Antimemetics Division. No, this is not you first day.”
― There Is No Antimemetics Division
― There Is No Antimemetics Division
“Certain things were important in the moment and so you called, only with insight and dread to catch up with you later. Sensory states came and went. You could call on a whim and there was no guarantee that the whim would return. But an entire life could be changed by one phone call made on such a whim at the exact right, or wrong, moment.”
― Utan personligt ansvar
― Utan personligt ansvar
“The most difficult thing about you,' Ester said, 'what pains me most, is your far to keen and quite astounding sense of your assets.'
'What assets?'
'Fluctuations of capital. Relationship capital.'
He encouraged her to elaborate.
'Inside you, there's an account from which you make automatic transactions. You, more than anyone else I have known, have a sense of your balance down to the last öre, and you base your behaviour towards me on that. Do you need to make a deposit, perhaps by being considerate, or can you afford to make a withdrawal by being scornful, cold and indifferent, or do you even have to touch your balance at all? Everyone has an account like this inside them, all people keep track of when they should make an effort and when they can sit back, when to make a withdrawal or a deposit. But your capital calibrator is much more finely tuned than most, and far less impacted by moral judgments. You don't seem to want to adjust it based on outside or competing perspectives, for example the well-being of your fellow man or partner. And it doesn't seem to occur to you to simply disregard it - which you can, you know. You only ever do as much as you have to. I'm sorry to say it's unsettling to watch.”
― Utan personligt ansvar
'What assets?'
'Fluctuations of capital. Relationship capital.'
He encouraged her to elaborate.
'Inside you, there's an account from which you make automatic transactions. You, more than anyone else I have known, have a sense of your balance down to the last öre, and you base your behaviour towards me on that. Do you need to make a deposit, perhaps by being considerate, or can you afford to make a withdrawal by being scornful, cold and indifferent, or do you even have to touch your balance at all? Everyone has an account like this inside them, all people keep track of when they should make an effort and when they can sit back, when to make a withdrawal or a deposit. But your capital calibrator is much more finely tuned than most, and far less impacted by moral judgments. You don't seem to want to adjust it based on outside or competing perspectives, for example the well-being of your fellow man or partner. And it doesn't seem to occur to you to simply disregard it - which you can, you know. You only ever do as much as you have to. I'm sorry to say it's unsettling to watch.”
― Utan personligt ansvar
“I knew Frédérique wouldn't write. But I persevered in the pleasure of taking my sadness to the limit, the way one does with some practical joke. The pleasure of disappointment. It wasn't new to me. I had been relishing it ever since I was eight years old, a boarder in my first, religious, school. And perhaps they were the best years, I thought. Those years of discipline. There was a kind of elation, faint but constant throughout all those days of discipline, the sweet days of discipline.”
― Sweet Days of Discipline
― Sweet Days of Discipline
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